C. Burglin v. Rogers C. B. Morton, as the Secretary of the Interior of the United States

Plaintiffs filed four lawsuits charging that the Secretary of the Interior had wrongfully rejected their several offers for noncompetitive oil and gas leases. The district court consolidated the cases, and granted summary judgment in favor of the government defendants. Plaintiffs appeal from that decision. We find that there is no genuine issue of material fact with respect to any properly justiciable issue, and affirm the district court’s dismissal as a matter of law.

During the latter half of 1968 four small groups of individual plaintiffs (plaintiff Burglin being a member of each group) made several offers for oil and gas leases in the State of Alaska. Each of the offers, made pursuant to Section 17 of the Mineral Lands Leasing Act, as amended, 30 U.S.C. § 226 , was rejected by the Bureau of Land Management on the ground that one of the lease offerors (Burglin in each case) could not be identified on the offer form due to an illegible signature. Each of the rejections was appealed to the Interior Board of Land Appeals, which affirmed in each case.

Although the signature defects were cured subsequent to the date of original filing, in the interim the lands had been…